David Ward talks to Willy Russell | Culture | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Playwright Willy Russell has returned to one of his greatest hits, done a spot of trimming and rewriting, and produced what he now calls Stags and Hens - The Remix. The new version opens at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool on February 1. First produced 30 years ago, the play tells of a couple who, by coincidence, spend the night before their wedding in the same Liverpool venue. There were plenty of laughs then, but surely there are more jokes now? "Oh no," says Russell, now 60 and a grandfather. The gag quotient hasn't risen: "It's just that you didn't laugh at the 1978 jokes." You could write a decent dissertation on the differences between the two versions. Out go mentions of John Wayne, Britt Ekland, and Tonto (the Lone Ranger's horse); in come Bo Derek, Elvis Costello and Rolf Harris. Clearly, this is not an update. The happy couple can still be found partying in a dancehall with dodgy electrics in Liverpool in 1978. And the deep sadness remains. "The play will not update," insists Russell.

"The tribal thing at the centre of it, the male-female thing, is not true today. The whole booze culture has been replaced by a drug culture. The very idea of this mainstream disco ballroom has gone. And for stag or hen nights now they are on planes going to Amsterdam or Malaga or Dublin." Kevin Fearon, now staging plays at Liverpool's Royal Court without subsidy, wanted to produce Stags and Hens. Russell agreed - "subject to me taking a look at it. I think it was the prompt I needed. When I heard of other productions, I tended to wince. Not that the subject matter is wrong, but the way I told it in 1978 is not right for now. Under the influence of film, the speed with which we tell stories today is very different. In theatre then, a scene would still largely have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's not so today - you can use the cinema device of going straight to the moment." Russell went to work on the new version immediately. The play is now a good 20 minutes shorter, has far more "fucks" and has lost its only c-word. It's a tougher piece of work.

It's still set in the dancehall's toilets, where the groom spends the entire play with his head stuck down a toilet. The basic theme of staying or leaving remains and is just as relevant. "Ringo Starr has just been given a kicking because he left Liverpool!" adds Russell, recalling the Beatle's return to his home city for the opening of its year as European capital of culture . "Of course he left Liverpool - he was in the Beatles!" The next sentence is preceded by a small sigh of exasperation. "The thing that I'm endlessly praised for, and it's nothing to do with my work, is that I always stayed in Liverpool." In the play, the bride Linda meets Peter, an ex who has gone to London and found a bit of Top of the Pops glory as a singer. "The debate between Peter and Linda in the remix is stronger than in the original and much more spelled out. While it wasn't consciously at the front of my brain, I must have had the idea in my head because we were just about to embark on this capital of culture thing. I knew this debate was in the air and it must have infused what has been written. "This thing does not change in Liverpool.

Just two weeks ago, [Liverpool lawyer and arts patron] Rex Makin gave Phil Redmond a good kicking because Redmond has moved out to Tarporley [a Cheshire village]. He's not got Liverpool credentials any more!" That's exactly what Linda, a close relative of Russell's Shirley Valentine and Rita, says to Peter: "I can say just what the fuck I like about living here because I do live here ... So when you come back here an' you hear one of us slaggin' off the place, don't think it gives you the right to join in. You left! Remember?" Russell lives here too but scorns any idea that Liverpool is some kind of essential inspiration. "I just take it completely for granted. I don't think of it in those terms. I wince when people say 'his beloved Liverpool'. That kind of sentimentality deeply, deeply embarrasses me." So why didn't he leave, seek fame and fortune in London like Peter? It was, he says, a self-protective thing.

By the time of his first success with John, Paul, George Ringo...and Bert, he had already knocked about in the folk world and seen people "screw up badly, do the whole drugs thing, go down the booze path. "I love living and love a jar. I know that's in me. I was aware of Brendan Behan and becoming the joke of London. I was aware of Robert Burns going to Edinburgh and being feted in the ploughman poet way. I always fought passionately to avoid that kind of thing." Stags and Hens opens just as Russell's musical Blood Brothers ends a three-week run at the Empire up the road. Russell has other projects on the go in the capital of culture year but none of them are happening under the banner of the Liverpool Capital of Culture Company. "I'm doing what I have always done. And if the perception out there is that it is part of capital of culture, that's something I'm not going to do anything to dispel.

I cannot not be part of Liverpool culture with that work going on." There is an obvious soreness that neither the Playhouse nor the Everyman, theatres with which he has been so closely associated, has commissioned a new play from him for 2008. But he holds back. "Despite my misgivings and serious criticism of lots of the shenanigans, I hope by the end of the year I can look back and say some marvellous things have happened and that Liverpool comes away from it with an enhanced reputation. We all hope that." Meanwhile, he is keeping watch on the Royal Court's plans to build a permanent company from the wealth of acting talent based in Liverpool. There are also hopes for a television version of his novel The Wrong Boy, a film of Blood Brothers, a full musical version of Our Day Out. But as yet no new play: the last was Shirley Valentine, first produced 22 years ago. "But I tend to find what I need to do. I love not working. I love being in Portugal and getting the paints out, walking, getting the binoculars out and looking at a bird." And he is now enjoying a senior citizen's benefits. "I got the bus pass last August.

I ran down, jumped on a bus and was waiting for everyone to shout, 'Throw him off - he's not 60'. And nobody did." Stags And Hens (Modern Classics) Willy Russell: Methuen Drama Modern Classics Moral Dilemmas, Class Issues, Friendship, Love, Popular Culture Dimensions: Special offer! Buy 10 or more books from the Modern Classics series and get 20% off the list price* *Pre-order books not included Request exam/desk copy Request exam/desk copy (?) Once you have successfully made your exam-copy request, you will receive a confirmation email explaining that your request is awaiting approval. On approval, you will either be sent the print copy of the book, or you will receive a further email containing the link to allow you to download your eBook. For more information, visit our exam-copy area . Please note that we currently support the following browsers: Internet Explorer 9, 10 and 11; Chrome (latest version, as it auto updates); Firefox (latest version, as it auto updates); and Safari (latest version, as it auto updates). For any other requests or concerns, please contact your Account Manager .

Lorem About Stags And Hens 'Stags and Hens takes place in the Gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other, to hold their stag and hen parties . . . a bleakly funny and perceptive study of working-class misogyny, puritanism and waste' Guardian 'Combines comedy with acrid truth in the style Willy Russell has made unmistakably his own ... and hits off brilliantly the herd instinct driving both sexes onward and bedward' Daily Telegraph 'Firmly in the centre of the playwright's best achievements: lively, coarse, well-organised, truthful and very funny' Financial Times Stags and Hens premiered at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, in October 1978. This edition was updated to coincide with the Liverpool Royal Court's production in February 2008, and includes a new introduction by the author. Willy Russell: 1970's Playwright pages CONTINUE to the 1980s Playwright... Willy Russell is one of the most successful playwrights of his generation.

His plays have been performed in countries across the globe and have won countless appreciation and creative awards as well as academic honours for their author. Since their premiers plays such as Educating Rita, Stags and Hens, Shirley Valentine, Breezeblock Park and Our Day Out have been in constant production throughout the world. We present these pages in the form of a timeline which, although under the heading of PLAYWRIGHT, shows all of Willy Russell's work including films, novels and significant moments in his career. During the 1970's... Willy Russell wrote ground breaking tv drama and stage plays, including Our Day Out (still used as a teaching resource in schools today), the award-winning musical John, Paul, George, Ringo & Bert... which began a long creative association with Barbara Dickson, Breezeblock Park, One for the Road, Stags & Hens and wrote the stage play Educating Rita, which was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and later turned into a film. PLAYGROUND Also produced at St Katherine's College. With KEEP YOUR EYES DOWN and SAM O SHANKER this formed the triple bill, BLIND SCOUSE first produced at St.

Katherine's College and then at the Edinburgh Fringe - The Rifle Lodge, Broughton Terrace. The production was seen and admired in Edinburgh by John McGrath who was then instrumental in getting Willy his first professional commission for the Liverpool Everyman Company, then under the directorship of Alan Dossor. 1973 'WHEN THE REDS' Adapted from Alan Plater's play, 'The Tigers Are Coming.' Produced at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Directed by Pam Brighton and featuring amongst the cast a young Bernard Hill and even younger Anthony Sher. "Even at the time and without the benefit of hindsight one knew just what an extraordinary company of actors Alan Dossor had assembled. As well as Bernard Hill and Tony Sher there was Jonathan Price, Alison Steadman, George Costigan, Trevor Eve, Liz Estensen, Philip Joseph, Matthew Kelly, Pete Postlethwaite, Julie Walters, Bill Nighy......awesome really." KING OF THE CASTLE A television play produced by BBC Birmingham as part of the Second City Firsts season. Transmitted 12th November 1973. TAM LIN A musical play for children, produced at Dovecot Primary School.

Book Lyrics and Music by Willy Russell SAM O'SHANKER A greatly reworked musical version of this play. Commissioned by Vanload, the Everyman Theatre Touring Company. This play toured pubs, clubs and community centres. 1974 DEATH OF A YOUNG YOUNG MAN Drama about a trio of youngsters suspended from school and the problems they then face. Broadcast as a part of the Play For Today series produced by BBC Birmingham. JOHN PAUL GEORGE RINGO ... and BERT Commissioned and directed by Alan Dosser for Liverpool's Everyman Theatre where it opened in May 1974. The production transferred to the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London in August. It ran for a year and won both the Evening Standard and London Critics' awards for Best Musical of 1974. Two major tours followed the West End run. The soundtrack with Barbara Dickson and the London cast was released on RSO records. BREAK IN Produced for BBC Schools television programme Scene. CANTRIL TALES The Cantril Tales was a Christmas production at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre as part of the celebrations of the theatre’s 10th anniversary.

It was an adaptation of the format of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and made up of a collection of pieces by different writers, including Willy Russell, George Costigan, Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Henri, Rick Juckes, C.G. Bond, Peter Postlethwaite & Nick Stringer. It was assembled by Willy Russell, directed by Jonathan Pryce and featured Nicholas Woodeson, Peter Postlethwaite, Nick Stringer, Rowena Parr, Matthew Kelly, David Peart, Katherine Fahy, Bill Nighy, Julie Walters. 1975 BREEZEBLOCK PARK Commissioned and directed by Alan Dosser for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. A new production of this play was directed by Alan Dosser for the Mermaid Theatre, London in August 1977, which transferred to the Whitehall Theatre in September of the same year. 1976 'I READ THE NEWS TODAY' BBC Schools radio production OUR DAY OUT 'I still watch it today. The performances are exquisite. Shot on 16mm in just three weeks by a first time director working with a largely untrained cast it just seemed to be one of those charmed ventures in which everything just fell into place.

A great bonus, for me, is the understated but stunning Nic Jones version of Teddy Bears Picnic over the final credits.' First performed at Manchester Contact Theatre where it was originally advertised as TUPPERWARE MAN. Following legal threats from the Tupperware Company, however, the title was changed to PAINTED VEG AND PARKINSON for its opening in November, directed by Caroline Smith. 1977 A two part film for BBC Schools television programme Scene.

1978 "Stags and Hens" : Willy Russell : 9780413767806 "Stags and Hens" Add to basket Add to wishlist Description 'Stags and Hens takes place in the Gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, where Dave and Linda have decided, unbeknownst to each other, to hold their stag and hen parties ...a bleakly funny and perceptive study of working-class misogyny, puritanism and waste' Guardian 'Combines comedy with acrid truth in the style Willy Russell has made unmistakably his own ...and hits off brilliantly the herd instinct driving both sexes onward and bedward' Daily Telegraph 'Firmly in the centre of the playwright's best achievements: lively, coarse, well-organised, truthful and very funny' Financial Times Stags and Hens premiered at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, in October 1978. This edition was updated to coincide with the Liverpool Royal Court's production in February 2008, and includes a new introduction by the author.

show more Product details 124.46 x 190.5 x 7.62mm | 45.36g Publication date Playwright Willy Russell Willy Russell Willy Russell (Playwright, Educating Rita .) was born in Whiston, near Liverpool, U.K.,in 1947. He left school when he was fifteen and became a ladies hairdresser for six years,but he left to do a variety of jobs, including stacking stockings in a warehouse and cleaning girders in a car factory. He also began writing and composing folk songs and performing at clubs and concerts. Around this time, he decided to complete his education. He went to college, became a school teacher,and as he became more interested in drama, he began to write. His first plays were produced in the early 1970s as part of a student production at St. Katharine’s College in Liverpool and later taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His subsequent plays include a couple of pieces written for BBC TV. In 1974, he wrote his first major success, the musical John, Paul, George, Ringo ...

and Bert, which won the Evening Standard and London’s Critics Awards for Best Musical and launched two national tours. His next major works in the 1970s include Breezeblock Park, Our Day Out (presented on BBC), One for the Road, and Stags and Hens. In 1979, he wrote Educating Rita, which was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play won many awards, including the Society of West End Theatre Award (SWET Award – now called the Olivier Award) for Best Comedy, and ran for the next three years, followed by two highly successful national tours. The following year, he was honored with an Academy Award nomination for writing the screenplay for the film, which starred Michael Caine and Julie Walters. In 1983, he wrote the award-winning musical Blood Brothers, a bigs uccess in London which eventually opened on Broadway ten years later. In 1988, he wrote the play Shirley Valentine, winner of the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, which transferred to Broadway the following year, and he also wrote the screenplay for the feature film. In 2000, his first novel, The Wrong Boy, was published.

He currently lives in Liverpool and is working on a number of projects. August, 2008 Stags & Hens - Drama Online Stags & Hens Copyright © 1985 by Willy Russell Enquire about performing rights at: Casarotto Ramsay & Associates, Waverley House, 7-12 Noel Street, London W1F 8GQ [ ] All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before rehearsals to the performance rights holder. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained. No rights in incidental music or songs contained in the Work are hereby granted and performance rights for any performance/presentation whatsoever must be obtained from the respective copyright owners. Acts: 2. Roles: Male (7) , Female (5) , Neutral (0) Read play » Unknown to each other, Linda and Dave have decided to have their respective hen and stag parties in the same tacky Liverpool club – or more accurately, in its toilets.

With the girls applying make-up, doing their hair and crying in cubicles, and the boys puking into the lavatory and drawing on the walls, the whole of Stags and Hens takes place in the Ladies and Gents. Both parties are out on the pull, after a night (or even just a few minutes) of passion – with the exception of the groom, who is throwing up after the curry, and the bride, who is having second thoughts. Russell’s raucous, coarse, and very funny play is a brilliant depiction of what passes for courtship, and the squeals, jeers and flings considered a necessary prelude to getting married. Stags and Hens premiered in 1978 at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool; the updated text, entitled Stags and Hens – The Remix was produced at the Royal Court, Liverpool, in 2008.

From Stags And Hens View All Photos (3) Movie Info British playwright Willy Russell (Shirley Valentine, Educating Rita) adapts his play Stags and Hens for the screen and, with director Mike Ockrent, who also directed the stage production of Educating Rita, succeeds in conveying the cocky-eyed and aimless textures of working-class Liverpool ("It's like Beirut without the sun" one character points out) in Dancin' Thru the Dark. In this atmosphere-laden character piece, Linda (Claire Hackett) is out cavorting with her friends on the night before her wedding at a Liverpool nightery. But then her husband-to-be and his friends arrive to celebrate at the same joint. As if that weren't enough coincidence to go around, pop singer Peter (Con O'Neill), Linda's ex-boyfriend, and his rock band arrive in town to play a gig -- and it happens to be at the same club. Then Linda's past and future come together like two smashing beer mugs. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi Rating: Willy Russell | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography b.

William Martin Russell, 23 August 1947, Whiston, Lancashire, England. After leaving school at the age of 15, Russell became a hairdresser, meanwhile harbouring a desire to become a writer. In his spare time, he wrote songs, composing with the guitar, and for a while sang as a member of the Kirby Town Three. He drifted into other jobs, mainly manual, then, at the age of 22, he decided to extend his education and returned to school. He attended Childwall College of Further Education and then St. Katharine’s College of Higher Education in Liverpool, training to become a teacher. In 1973/4 he briefly taught but had meanwhile been directing his burgeoning talent into becoming a dramatist. His first play, Keep Your Eyes Down, was produced in 1971. Among other early works was Sam O’Shanker, an updating of Robert Burns’ epic poem Tam O’Shanter, which he later adapted into a one-act play. Together with Playground, Sam O’Shanker and Keep Your Eyes Down formed the trilogy, Blind Scouse, which was staged at the 1972 Edinburgh Fringe festival.

Owing to the Fringe performance, Russell came to the attention of the Everyman Touring Company, which staged some his works. In 1973, Russell adapted Alan Plater’s play, The Tigers Are Coming into When The Reds. Produced by Alan Dossor and directed by Pam Brighton at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, the cast reads like a who-was-soon-to-be-who of British stage, film and television: Bernard Hill, Anthony Sher, Jonathan Pryce, Alison Steadman, George Costigan, Trevor Eve, Liz Estensen, Philip Joseph, Matthew Kelly, Pete Postlethwaite, Julie Walters, and Bill Nighy. Russell’s next play for the theatre, John, Paul, George, Ringo … And Bert, brought the breakthrough into the mainstream of British theatre when it was transferred to London’s West End. This account of the rise and eventual dissolution of the Beatles was a great success with audiences and critics alike, winning the Evening Standard and London Theatre Critics Awards for Best Musical.

Other stage plays followed, among them Terraces (1979), Breezeblock Park (1975), Stags And Hens (1978), which became Dancin’ Thru The Dark when it was filmed in 1990, and Educating Rita (1980). The latter had been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and, after its West End production, it won the 1980 SWET (Society of West End Theatres) Award for Best Comedy. Educating Rita became a successful film, for which Russell wrote the screenplay, starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters, the latter having appeared in the original stage production. Russell was nominated for a 1983 Academy Award for Best Screenplay Adaptation. Russell’s Blood Brothers was first produced in 1981 but a revised version, for which he wrote book, lyrics and score, opened in Liverpool in 1983 and proved to be a huge success on its transfer to London’s West End. When the play transferred to Broadway it met with poor critical response, but went on to run for two years and pick up several Tony Awards.

Another success was Shirley Valentine (1986), which was staged both in the West End and on Broadway, and which starred Pauline Collins who won SWET and Tony Awards as Best Actress. Russell, too, received numerous awards for this work. When Shirley Valentine was filmed in 1989, Russell wrote the screenplay, for which he won The Evening Standard Film Award for Best Screenplay, and collaborated on the score with George Hatzinassios. Russell’s first television play, King Of The Castle, was screened by the BBC in 1973 and subsequent television dramas include Break In, The Death Of A Young, Young Man (both 1975), Our Day Out (1977), which Russell adapted as a stage musical in 1983 and revised again in 1995, Lies and Politics And Terror (both 1978), The Daughters Of Albion (1979), The Boy With The Transistor Radio (1980), and Terraces (1993). A five-part television serial produced by Yorkshire Television for Channel Four, One Summer, was troubled in production and Russell eventually had his name removed from the credits.

He also composed the music for Ron Hutchinson’s television series, Connie (1985), a single of the theme, ‘The Show’, sung by Rebecca Storm, almost charted; and he composed the score for the film Mr Love (1986), for which the screenplay was by Ken Eastaugh. Russell has also written for radio, the play I Read The News Today airing in 1976, and his first novel, The Wrong Boy, was published in 2000 and was subsequently adapted as a television series. Occasionally over the years, Russell has appeared in performance, usually with other writers, including Andy Roberts, Roger McGough (Scaffold; McGough And McGear) and Adrian Henri, singing and playing his songs and reading excerpts from his works. In the early 00s Willy Russell & Friends was staged at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and featured Paul McCartney and Adrian Mitchell. Together with fellow playwright and screenwriter Tim Firth, Russell toured the UK with An Evening With Willy Russell And Tim Firth, in which they presented their own songs mingled with excerpts from their films and plays, poetry and anecdotes.

Russell and Firth collaborated again on a 2004 tour of the UK with In Other Words. The same year Russell recorded his own versions of some of his songs on Hoovering The Moon. A major figure in British theatre, film and television, Russell has observed that he regards drama as a way to bring important social issues before an audience that does not habitually turn to books for its information and enlightenment. Throughout his career, he has maintained this view, creating a succession of works that not only provide all of these things, but do so in the form of outstanding entertainment. Willy Russell - Stags and Hens I << BACK Stags and Hens Stags and Hens was originally conceived as an in-house television piece for Manchester Polytechnic's television and drama students in 1978 when Willy held the Chair in Creative Writing. The play focuses on a group of girls and local lads who venture out for a night of pre-marriage stag and hen party celebrations.

The action takes place in the Gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club, Bransky's, where Dave and Linda (bride and groom-to-be) have decided, unbeknownst to each other, to hold their stag and hen parties. Linda runs into her old boyfriend, Peter, a musician with a single climbing up the pop charts, but who is back in Liverpool on this particular night - playing a gig at Branskys. Whilst entering the club, Dave, in a drunken stupor, becomes ill from the indian curry he ate (washed down with a copious mix of cider and Guiness) and spends the remainder of the evening (and the play) in the Gents, with his head down the lavatory bowl! His mates, including Kas, and gang leader Eddie decide to take the law into their own hands when they suspect that Linda has developed a crush on Peter and may be having second thoughts about marrying Dave. THE FILM THAT NEVER WAS: Although filming did begin at Manchester Poly's Capitol Building (a former cinema which had become home to the Polytechnic's drama department) it was on a rather piecemeal basis.

"Apart from one very enthusiastic lecturer the various heads of department showed little or no enthusiasm for the project. The student actors (among them people like Al Hunter-Ashton and Judy Holt whom I'd go on to work with again in the future) pulled out all they could to try and get the film completed although with little support, no money and none of the film stock that had been promised, it became an impossible task and the project ground to a halt. I've never even seen a single frame of the pieces that were shot. I had an idea that although initially written as a student film, Stags and Hens could fairly easily be rewritten for the stage and so I sent a copy to Chris Bond at the Everyman and Chris was immediately up for it. Buoyed by his enthusiasm I sat down and quickly rewrote and restructured it for theatre." Willy Russell The play opened at the Everyman in October 1978 and was subsequently widely produced throughout the country and abroad, playing (as it still does today) to enthusiastic audiences and reviews (except for some adverse comments on the raunchy language and sexual innuendo in the play). In 1984 it was performed in London.

The play is still as fresh and relevant today as it was in 1978 and is still being performed both here in the UK and as far afield as Australia, Canada, America and Sweden. THE EVERYMAN CAST: Bride and Groom on weddings eve Should never the other one perceive For if they do theyll live to see A marriage without harmony Linda (Rachel Rae) starts having doubts as she and her friends dance the night away. Meanwhile, the groom to be Dave (Kris Mochrie) has passed out in the gents lav, surrounded by his mates. With the wedding less than 12 hours away, will the arrival of Lindas old flame- musician -Peter (Stephen Fletcher) put a cat amongst the pigeons? The fun of this fast paced play is finding out whether our heroine will get to the church on time or whether she will break away from her mates dreams and ideas. The performers bring a funny but edgy quality to this excellent comedy/drama and each one of them deserves praise as this really is an ensemble piece. But Rae is superb as the bride to be with cold feet; you really feel for her as a result.

Fletcher and this gifted actress have genuine chemistry making you believe in their plight. Gillian Hardie is a scream as head girl Bernie - the scary leader of the pack. As for the lads, they too are wonderful but Lenny Wood is ideal as awkward Billy, the one least likely to cop off. Russells writing still has a bittersweet flavour after all these years and director, Bob Eaton gives the play the pace and respect that it deserves. Mark Walters grimy set featuring his and hers backstage quarters and the back entrance to the club serves as a superb backdrop to this brilliant revival. Glenn Meads - WHATSONSTAGE.COM Feb 7 2008 Things aint what they used to be and people today are more likely to jump on a jet to Amsterdam to celebrate their last night of pre-marital freedom, than they are to go to their local club. Thank goodness then that Willy Russell hasnt updated Stags and Hens, but rather rewritten parts of this snapshot of a period, so it still works as well - although with much more of a contemporary feel.

Its 1977 and Linda (Rachel Rae) and Dave (Kris Mochrie) are getting married in the morning. Dave is legless when he enters the seediest club in town and forced into in the gents with his head down the bowl. In the same club Linda, the feisty wife-to-be, and her mates are getting drunk, dancing and trying to pull. Add to the cocktail a returning old flame on the way up, light the blue touch paper and stand well back. This is classic Willy Russell - lots of subtlety, some moments of inspired genius and an underlying message summed up best by The Clash all those years ago, should I stay or should I go, that has been formed into something so much more by director, Bob Eaton, and this superlative entirely Liverpool cast. The pick of which, in mind of equality, are Keddy Sutton, playing the dithering Maureen with such superb timing it is difficult to imagine anybody else in the role, and James Spofforth as the disillusioned Eddie, Daves best mate, who has an edge to his character that is both deeply disturbing and highly likeable.

Excellent, too, is Gillian Hardie as Bernie, the archetypal seventies married woman out on the pull, and Danny OBrian as Kav, the highly talented yet naive artist. With an effective split stage set, outstanding writing, superlative direction and fabulous performances all round, Stags and Hens is a play that remains a great deal of fun and is guaranteed to have audiences chuckling and empathising with everyone on stage. Tremendous stuff. CHRIS HIGH - THE STAGE This is a marriage in theatrical heaven. Peter Grant - Liverpool Daily Post A Comedy Classic There are people who reckon remakes are never as good as the originals. Last night at the Liverpool Playhouse, they were proved wrong. Willy Russell's comedy Stags and Hens about girls and boys at a night out before a wedding, was extremely funny at the Liverpool Everyman a few years' back. Last night the Playhouse turned it into a comedy classic. This was due to the superb cast which made the humour come across directly with some realism. The dialogue sparkled with its common but witty lines.

The set designed by Ellen Cairns allowed the 12-strong cast to parade their talents to their full extent, with Andrew Schofield's Billy and Mia Soteriou's Maureen particularly amusing. Director Pip Broughton is able to turn Russell's play into a slice of reality that continually amuses, and makes this drama something that must touch every member of the audience. It is in this way that the production continually appeals and should ensure the Playhouse ending their season with a smash hit. PHILIP KEY- LIVERPOOL DAILY POST Stags and Hens Willy Russell's Stags and Hens is a magnificently vulgar assault on the threadbare idyll of young love and marriage - first performed at the Everyman Theatre in 1979, now revived in an even sharper production at Liverpool Playhouse. An engaged couple unwittingly roll up at the same seedy club for their stag hen parties. The action takes place in the toilets - yellowing urinals and condom machines on one side of Ellen Cairn's lovingly-detailed set, cubicles and tampon machines on the other.

"love is blind, marriage is an institution - who wants to live in an institution for the blind?" Some of Russell's jokes are a bit hoary, and you occasionally get the feeling that he fills a notebook with club gems, then cobbles a comedy together around them. But he's also accurate and affectionate, with occasional wonderfully surrealistic flights of fancy, improbably triggered off by tedious surburban paraphernalia like the accoutrements the couple is supposed to need for the simple business of coffee-making. He's also strikingly visual: the tatty toilets, the girls in their glad-rags - Frances stretched out on the toilet floor to fasten her canary yellow pedal pushers over her bulging paunch; Bernadette in a scarlet sequin boob-tube stopping the gaping ladders in her black stockings with nail varnish, and the men carrying in the wholy-faced, unconscious groom to be, traces of an unfortunate chicken curry dinner all over his trousers. The final orgiastic tableau on the stairs is gorgeous.

IRENE McMANUS - GUARDIAN (MAY 1982) Willy Russell had a great hit in Dublin with his musical Blood Brothers and in the Focus Theatre next Monday another of his works will be premiered. Stags and Hens is a play based on a potentially explosive situation. "Ey wouldn't it be awful if the fellas turned up as well?" The girls are out for a hen party at the local disco and wonder where the lads are having the stag party. The same place would you believe. This classic little play is a very funny look at the whys and wherefores of love, lust and marriage and is peppered with the brand of Liverpudlian wit which endeared Blood Brothers to Dublin audiences. The director is Ronan Wilmot and the talented young cast includes Liz Brogan, Janyne Snow, Robbie Bowman, Joe Campbell and Mal White. Looks like just the formula to raise us from the deep winter blues. MICHAEL SHERIDAN - IRISH PRESS Vacant or Engaged?

If you enjoyed the clever wit and frank humour of 'Educating Rita', you are certain to giggle your way through 'Stags and Hens' also written by Willy Russell currently showing at the Nottingham Playhouse. He has this wonderful knack of creating real characters and presenting them in real situations. Dave and Linda are getting married. The night before the big day, the y spend their stag and hen nights coincidentally at the same local dance hall in Liverpool. The setting is the ladies and gents toilets - what better or more obvious a place for a good gossip and the release of those pent up frustrations and thoughts on 'the other sex',(as well as touching up the war paint and satisfying your ego by writing your name on the already well graffitied walls). After all it's the only escape from the confines of a noisy and crowded bar and dance-floor where the real pressure is on to 'tap off'. All manner of emotions and questions are raised ranging from - 'What is having a good time..

does marriage really result in being made up' (that's Liverpudlian for being happy or satisfied) to - 'What are we doing, who make the rules and where are we going - Anywhere or nowhere?' Dave unfortunately doesn't get involved he's too busy throwing-up in the toilets - he spends most of the performance there (Nigel Betts must take credit for patience). However, the others except Eddie (he makes all these meaningful and deeply serious comments) are raring to go - Robbie's already found a bird - was she Madonna or was it Maradonna? Meanwhile Linda has shut herself in the ladies cubicle agonising over her last night of freedom. 'It's only natural, nerves' says Bernie her girlfriend. It's too late anyway to change your mind; Maureen can't take the barbeque chairs back (that's her wedding present to a couple who are starting out in a block of flats) and if that isn't reason - you don't back out of the chance to have your own place, hoover and all. The play has the same sort of attraction as TV soap operas (that's why I think so many students might enjoy it).

Simon O'Brien, well known to television viewers as 'Damon Grant' in Channel 4's 'Brookside' makes his first professional theatre appearance as 'Kav' - without a slip. However I think the last word must be in praise of Marie Jelliman (Bernie) whose voice projection, facial expressions and enthusiasm is terrific especially her convincing imitations of a girl adjusting herself at a mirror. If you're planning to spend an evening 'on the town', think again - it's two for the price of one for students on Mondays at the Playhouse and this play guarantees more than a few laughs. ANNA OTTEWILL - NOTTINGHAM IMPACT More bathroom than humor - tribunedigital-baltimoresun More bathroom than humor THEATER September 15, 2005|By J. Wynn Rousuck | J. Wynn Rousuck,SUN THEATER CRITIC Willy Russell's Stags and Hens is set in a bathroom, and despite some talented performances by the young actors from Britain's SongTime Theatre, the production at the Theatre Project never ascends above the level of the loo.

To be precise, the play takes place in two lavatories - the men's and ladies' rooms of the Liverpool club that, unintentionally, turns out to be the site of the bachelor and bachelorette parties of a couple on the eve of their marriage. Because it's supposed to be bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other the night before the wedding - as we're repeatedly told - much of the spindly plot concerns trying to keep the two apart. Russell, who is best known as the author of Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and the musical Blood Brothers, calls Stags and Hens a comedy. But based on director John Payton's production, it's more of a sad commentary on dead-end, blue-collar, superstition-laden, small-town life - a commentary strewn with profanity, sexual references and a smattering of violence. The playwright, a Liverpudlian himself, knows this territory well (the small-town, blue-collar part, that is; I can't speak for the bathroom aspect).

And SongTime's actors revel in their loud, coarse characters, portrayed by, among others, Hayley Hills as the gals' ringleader; Lee Thomas as her brutish, bullying male counterpart; Michael Harrison as a sweet but dim hanger-on; and Jamie Leaves as a self-professed ladies' man. The only character who undergoes any perceptible change is the bride, Linda, and Katie King's sly depiction of her is the most interesting on stage. A brief reunion scene with a former beau-turned-rock singer (Sam Underwood) is one of the evening's rare genuinely dramatic moments - it's also the quietest, which says a lot about all the bluff and bluster that surrounds it. I can't say much about the portrayal of the groom. That's because Brent Ford, who plays this wordless part, spends most of the evening with his head in the toilet (that's the type of play this is). I can say that if these nasty, self-obsessed characters are truly each others' closest friends - as they repeatedly claim to be - then they embody the adage: With friends like these, who needs enemies?

According to his Web site, Russell wrote Stags and Hens in 1978 as an in-house television play for students at Manchester Polytechnic, where he was teaching creative writing. This may be why it seemed appropriate for SongTime Theatre, which is the performing company of a British theater school. Most of the cast members at the Theatre Project are under the age of 22, and they almost all show promise. But while they are the proper ages for their roles, their material is far more seamy than seemly. I don't think it will give too much away to reveal that one of the celebrants manages to escape at the end of the play. Personally, this critic was tempted to escape long before that. Show times at the Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., are 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $16. For more information, call 410-752-8558. `Yankees' devil Former Marylander Brad Oscar, a Tony Award nominee for his portrayal of Franz Liebkind in The Producers, will star as the devil in Damn Yankees at Washington's Arena Stage, Dec.

9-Feb. 5. Oscar, who won the role of Liebkind after the actor who was originally cast injured his knee, subsequently played the lead role of Max Bialystock. Based on The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Douglass Wallop's novel, Damn Yankees is a modern-day Faust story. Arena's production will be directed by Molly Smith with choreography by Baayork Lee. Matt Bogart, who starred as Lancelot in Smith's 2003 production of Camelot and as Val in her 2004 staging of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, will play Joe Hardy, the fan who sells his soul to play ball for the Yankees. Cabaret series Beginning Sunday, the Baltimore Theatre Alliance will launch a cabaret series showcasing local performers. The program will feature comedy and improvisation as well as scenes and songs from coming area productions. The cabaret performances, called "Sundays Near the Park with George!", will take place at 6 p.m. in the Rooftop Conservatory of the Peabody Court Hotel, 612 Cathedral St. Cover charge is $6. Doors open at 5 p.m.

This Sunday's roster of performers will include Harriette Bush Clark, Liz Boyer Hunnicutt and Dyana Neal, among others. Future cabarets are scheduled for Oct. 23, Dec. 11, Jan. 15, Feb. 26, April 9 and May 21. For more information call, 410-662-9945 or visit moreperforms.org. At Strathmore

Question: Which British playwright wrote "Stags and Hens"?
Answer: Willy Russell